The brilliant haute spy character Modesty Blaise – created by British author Peter O’Donnell in 1963 and kept alive, through 2002, in a series of comic books and novels – has been botched on film so many times that those of us who love this urbane, intuitive temptress (with a flair for hand-to-hand combat) have mostly given up hope. Joseph Losey first missed the target with the 1966 Modesty Blaise; Scott Spiegel took another wobbly shot with the 2004 direct-to-video My Name Is Modesty: A Modesty Blaise Adventure. But the spirit of Modesty lives, by another name and in a different sort of story, in Stephen Soderbergh’s stylish, quietly exhilarating Haywire, which features mixed martial-arts star Gina Carano as a hit person with a smoldering, deadpan gaze and nutcracker thighs. She also, as it happens, looks killer in a cocktail dress.more »